Brazil recommends restrictions on Sanofi dengue vaccine
BRAZIL - The Brazilian government said on Monday it has suggested restrictions on the use of a dengue vaccine that has been suspended elsewhere after French drug company Sanofi SA said it could worsen the disease in some cases. Brazil’s healthcare regulator Anvisa said it is now recommending that people who have never been infected with dengue not take the vaccine, which was approved for use in Brazil at the end of 2015. The Brazilian government has not suspended the drug entirely, although the Philippine government has. Anvisa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately known many people have taken the vaccine, if it was part of any government immunization program or if any illnesses or deaths linked to the drug have been reported to the government. A spokesman for Sanofi in Paris was not immediately available for comment. The Philippines on Monday ordered an investigation into the immunisation of more than 730,000 children with the dengue vaccine that has been suspended following an announcement by French drug company Sanofi that it could worsen the disease in some cases. The World Health Organisation said it hoped by the end of the year to conduct a full review of data on the vaccine, commercially known as Dengvaxia. In the meantime, the WHO recommended it be used only in people who had a prior infection with dengue. Dengue is a mosquitoborne tropical disease, killing about 20,000 people a year and infecting hundreds of millions. Sanofi explained its “new findings” at a news conference in Manila but did not say why action was not taken after a WHO report in mid2016 that identified the risk. While Sanofi’s Dengvaxia is the first approved vaccine for dengue, scientists already recognised it did not protect equally against the four different types of the virus.
(Reuters)